The horror looms over the unsuspecting person. The people in the audience tense. What will happen? The person on the screen slowly looks around. Someone in the audience thinks: “What is his problem? Shouldn’t he know what is about to happen? Is he really that stupid?” And the person on the screen leans backward, eyes widening, mouth popping almost comically open, wide open into that great “O” shape of terror, and the horror is seen, it descends, its claws open, its slobbering fangs shiny and slick…someone in the audience snickers. The person onscreen thinks: “This can’t be happening!” The horror snaps its jaws down over the victim’s head. Feet kick. There is a frenzy. It is a horror.
Someone in the audience laughs outright.
It is all a movie. We’ve seen thousands of them. People love to be scared. Horror. Fantasy. Civilized, safe citizens living in a clean, safe, civilized world, watching fake thrills on the silver screen. The world is safe, scientific, and our government takes care of us. The government and the media love us, and they keep us safe. They would never, ever lie to us, would they?
The press, the media, and a whole lot of experts are already as early as October 2009 claiming that the H1N1 Swine Flu is not serious, that it is no worse than "seasonal flu," that it is all a whole lot of hype, that it has already passed, that it has proven itself a nonentity. It is just flu. No biggie. Just the plain old flu. The media and all the governments of the world are claiming that modern technology and the super-sized brains of science have already got it licked — the 2009 Swine Flu Pandemic — that vaccines "are uh-comin'" and that modern anti-virus potions make the reality of danger to your health, to the health of your family and friends, really just a simplistic equation, that Swine Flu isn't really all that serious, that there is no reason — absolutely no reason — for you to be concerned.
How in the world do they KNOW this, that we will all be okay, that the sunshine will be bright and golden, that all will be well in the world? Where are they getting their special knowledge? But this question of WHERE is not the question, not the eager question, the one that can barely suppress its excitement.
You can see it just back there. It's the one jumping up and down.
All of this being said, and the real flu season has not even started. In October 2009, flu deaths are much higher than "regular flu season" numbers, and the prevalence of the virus is so much more widespread today, right now, than any other virus has ever been before in the history of the world (including the 1918-1919 virus), and the fact that healthy young adults under the age of 25 are reacting to this particular virus EXACTLY as the young people did in 1918-1919, all of this is happening, right now, before the real flu season has even gotten off the ground, and the question is jumping up and down and waving its pale arms.
But nobody calls on it, that poor bouncing question. It is frantic, this question. It desperately wants to be called upon. But nobody in 1918 asks the question. They are locked like grainy characters in a silent movie. Poor, stupid, grainy sepia people.
And it is all happening again, almost the same way and with all the same lies.
Everything that is being broadcast and printed today, was broadcast and printed in 1918-1919. Living time in tiny steps, seconds really, we don't know what is going to happen in five minutes from now, let alone six weeks from today. And people were the same way in 1918. They lived their days moment by moment, as the horror grew.
But there is no horror at this moment, is there? Sure, it is sad that hundreds of children have died in a few months, but it is nothing, is it, compared to the horror of 1918? And millions have not perished, in this modernized world of easy-going pandemic viruses, have they? As those best-case scenario “peace peace peace” prophets keep trumpeting, I mean the Swine Flu is mild, isn't it? People are recovering, aren't they? Hardly anyone is dying.
The horror we are able to comprehend in regard to 1918 is by looking at it backward, through time, as a whole. We can see the big picture, the whole enchilada. We can shake our heads and say: “Oh those idiots, couldn’t they see what was coming?” But looking at it forward, moment by moment, the people in the past were just like the people of today. They didn't know what was hitting them. They stood blinking, as neighborhoods, communities fell dead around them, as family members coughed up their life in dark rivulets of bloody froth, the poor dumb people of the olden days stood blinking and didn't know they were in the middle of a horror. And all the while the newspapers kept repeating: "This is nothing. Don't be afraid. Don't panic. Wash your hands."
Today, we are all modern and civilized, our chests puff out with scientific pride (and yes, a whole lot of plastic chest implants, as well), as we stand looking back at 1918 cavemen (sorry Geico caveman). We see the 1918-1919 Great Pandemic like stereotypical horror movie characters that are hardly more than cardboard. Yes, they fall over. All grainy in their black and white and sepia tones. They didn’t have vaccines. They didn’t have snazzy anti-flu drugs. They gobbled aspirin like candy. They didn’t have Burger King and McDonalds and Wendys and all the modern conveniences of Wal-mart.
Back then in them far-gone days, the doctors scratched their heads. What in the world IS this thing? It is killing young people, not the usual suspects of ordinary garden-variety influenzas. Young, healthy army guys, twenty years old, getting really sick, really fast, dying, and the doctors scratch their heads. What is this? Mind you, this doesn’t happen all at once in one big blat, a splat of horror. It happens gradually, moment by moment, just as it does in real life. We just view it differently, in one big blat, looking back at the past.
Meanwhile, the press (the “media” back then, can you imagine that those unsophisticated cavemen didn’t have the Internet? didn’t have TV, for goodness sake!) kept saying: “Don’t panic. Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. This isn’t serious. It’s just the flu! Doctors have it under control! It is going away, this flu, this nothing special flu, it is going away, you don’t have to worry.”
Today, in these civilized days, the doctors are scratching their heads. What in the world IS this thing? It is killing young people, not the usual gooey suspects that the garden-variety influenza plucks, those withered flowers, those old people, no, this flu is attacking young, healthy girls and boys, children, and the doctors scratch their heads. What is this? And it is gratingly slow, this living moment by moment, no huge explosion of death has happened, has it?
Meanwhile, the media is putting up headlines about how there is nothing to worry about. This is the flu. More mild than seasonal influenza. It is just the flu. Don’t panic. Don’t worry. You’ll be okay. We’ll take care of you!
And there is that question, again, jumping up and down, waving its arms, calling out: “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” This question really wants to be called upon, it really has something to voice, something special to ask, and yet nobody is looking at it, poor question. It keeps jumping up and down. It is literally begging to be asked. But the doctors are looking at the movie stars, and the government guys are calling on the smiling doctors, and the question keeps jumping up and down.
Okay, I’m going to take pity on that poor question. It is driving me crazy.
Yes? You there, the odd person with the odd hooked and domed head and the dot at the bottom, what IS it you want to ask?
"What the hell is wrong with you? Why can't you see and correlate a simple comparison, 1918 and today, that all this has already happened? Duh! Don’t you see this is the way it happened before, almost exactly? Why can’t you see the truth? What the hell is wrong with you? What is wrong with everyone? Are you empty-headed cardboard cutouts in a stupid, utterly predictably stupid horror movie? You can’t sense the horror creeping up on you? You have that inane look on your face as you chat into your cell phone, you’re grinning, practically drooling, waiting for your popcorn to pop in the microwave oven, and the horror is there, just behind you, looming, rising up, above you, its drool is dripping into your hair! Hello? Are you awake? Hello! HELLO...!”
Huh? What is that? Oh, it is the sound of a dropped call. A cell phone going dead. Clattering. Dropping. Dead.
“As terrifying as the disease was, the press made it more so. They terrified by making little of it. For what officials said bore no relationship to what people saw, and touched, and smelled, and endured. People could not trust what they read. Uncertainty follows distrust. Fear follows uncertainty. And under conditions such as these, terror follows fear.”
"...some of the deaths in 1918 were the government's responsibility. Surgeon General Rupert Blue was his day's Mike Brown. Despite months of indications that the disease would erupt, Blue made no preparations. When the flu hit, he told the nation, 'There is no cause for alarm.'
Alarm was needed. Victims could die in 24 hours. Symptoms included bleeding from the nose, mouth, ears and eyes. Some people turned so dark blue from lack of oxygen that an Army physician noted that 'it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white.'
False reassurances from the government and newspapers added to the death rate. They also destroyed trust in authority, as Americans quickly realized they were being lied to. The result: society began to break apart. Confidential Red Cross reports noted "panic akin to the terror of the Middle Ages of the plague" and victims starving to death 'not from lack of food but because the well are afraid to help the sick.' Doctors and nurses were kidnapped. One scientist concluded that if the epidemic continued to build, 'civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few more weeks.'"
Someone in the audience laughs outright.
